Aurora Discovery Guide

Aurora is a small, wooded, affluent town between Cleveland and Akron, and it is a quiet base rather than a destination in itself.

Its main draw is outlet shopping at Aurora Farms, a large open-air centre on the edge of town, and a well-established spa and resort trade that has grown up around it.

For two generations Aurora was where north-east Ohio went on holiday: Geauga Lake, one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States, stood at the town’s northern edge, with a marine park beside it. Both are gone, and the site is being redeveloped, but the resort infrastructure they created remains.

What Aurora has now is woods and water — nature preserves along Tinker’s Creek, a chain of parks and a reservoir — and half an hour’s drive to almost anything in the region.

Outlet shopping

Aurora Farms Premium Outlets is an open-air centre of around seventy stores, which is the single largest reason most visitors come and the anchor of the town’s visitor economy.

Walking and water

The Aurora Sanctuary, an Audubon preserve of woodland and wetland with a boardwalk; Tinker’s Creek State Nature Preserve a short drive west, protecting one of the better bog and marsh complexes in the region; and Sunny Lake Park, with a loop trail around the water.

The village

The old town centre around the green, with the 1927 Aurora Inn, the 1809 Church in Aurora and a handful of nineteenth-century houses along the main road.

Spa and resort

Aurora has an unusually developed spa trade for a town its size, a legacy of the amusement park era.

Using it as a base

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland, Akron and Kent are all within about half an hour.

Aurora is a wooded commuter town with a long memory of being a resort.

Geauga Lake

The park opened as a picnic ground in 1887 and ran, under several owners and names, until 2007 — making it one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States when it closed. Sea World of Ohio operated across the lake from 1970 to 2001. For anyone who grew up in north-east Ohio, Aurora means those parks, and their loss is still discussed locally.

Cheese

In the nineteenth century this part of the Western Reserve was dairy country and Aurora was a cheese-making centre of some standing, shipping out by rail. The trade has gone, but it is why the town was prosperous early.

Affluent and residential

Aurora is now largely a commuter town of around sixteen thousand people, with a well-regarded school system and a good deal of woodland zoning, and its identity is suburban rather than small-town rural.

Quiet

Visitors should expect a place that closes early.

The nature preserves are the town’s real asset. The Aurora Sanctuary and the Tinker’s Creek preserves protect wetland and beech-maple woodland that is unusual in a developed part of Ohio; stay on the marked trails, which in places cross genuinely fragile bog and fen.

Tinker’s Creek drains into the Cuyahoga and its water quality affects the national park downstream. Do not disturb the banks, and take out what you carry in.

Development pressure is the local issue: Aurora has grown steadily as a commuter town, and the wooded lots and wetlands that give it its character are what gets built on. Several parcels are protected by land trusts.

Spend in town rather than only at the outlet centre — the older businesses along the main road and in Aurora Village depend on it.

May, September and October are the best months: comfortable temperatures, and the woods and preserves at their best — wildflowers in spring, colour in mid to late October.

June to August is warm and humid, with the parks and the lake busy at weekends and the outlet centre at its most crowded.

November and December bring the holiday shopping season, which is the outlet centre’s peak and the town’s busiest period.

January to March is cold and snowy — Aurora sits in the western part of the lake-effect belt and gets a good deal — and the town is quiet, which suits the spa trade.

April is wet and unsettled, though the spring migration through the sanctuary is good.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the city

Aurora is inexpensive, and its main attraction is retail, so the budget question is mostly how much you intend to spend at the outlets. Sales tax is added at the till and tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected.